Legislation that would give local governments the option of posting bid notices on a website instead of a newspaper cleared an Arkansas Senate committee on Wednesday over the objections of officials for the Arkansas Press Association and the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette.
In a voice vote, with Sen. Will Bond, D-Little Rock, dissenting, the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee recommended Senate approval of the latest version of Senate Bill 409 by Sen. Scott Flippo, R-Mountain Home. There was no debate among committee members.
The action came after an earlier version of the bill failed to clear the eight-member committee in a split voice vote on March 19.
At that meeting, Baton Rouge-based Central Bidding official Ted Fleming helped Flippo make a pitch for the bill.
Lobbyist and former Arkansas lawmaker Bruce Hawkins of Morrilton represents Central Bidding, according to records in the secretary of state's office.
[RELATED: Complete Democrat-Gazette coverage of the Arkansas Legislature]
The company, which operates at www.centralauctionhouse.com/, was founded in 2007 and is one of the largest providers of electronic bidding services to public and private entities, according to its website.
Flippo told the Senate committee Wednesday that his bill has been amended "to make sure that this bill is not vendor specific."
But Lynn Hamilton, president of the Democrat-Gazette, countered that Fleming's firm would be the chief beneficiary of the legislation.
"It will take him a little longer because there is a bidding process [required under the amended bill]. But he is going to wind up with all of the business. He has a months' long head start, and he is a good salesman," he said.
The bill requires the Office of State Procurement to select three vendors with which local governmental entities may contract to advertise their intent to receive bids online. The procurement office would issue a request for qualifications (RFQ) from vendors before selecting the three.
If fewer than three vendors respond or if there are fewer than three qualified vendors, the procurement office would select as many qualified vendors as possible.
After the committee meeting, Hawkins said that "if our client is not in the top three when they do the RFQ, that's the way it is."
He also said the legislation isn't "vendor specific."
Before using online notices exclusively, a municipality or school district would be required to provide notice through a newspaper as well as an online advertisement for five weeks, according to the bill. The governmental entity also would have to publish a notice in a newspaper within its county identifying which website has been designated for online bid notices.
"These allow for the advertisement notices to be done in a newspaper or online," Flippo said. "It does not prohibit the addition of a trade journal."
The amended legislation will allow for "a much more efficient process for our cities, counties and schools," he said.
The bill would create a state-level Public Works Committee to monitor vendors' compliance and complaints about them, and the cities and counties will maintain a constant posting of a link on their own websites to the vendors' websites.
The Public Works Committee would include the state procurement director, the executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, the executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties, the president of the Arkansas Municipal League and the executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators or their designees.
Flippo added penalties to the bill for vendors who violate any of its requirements, including a Class B misdemeanor, which is punishable by six months in jail and a $2,500 fine and banishment from the vendor list for five years plus damages.
He told the committee that previous points made by the press association "clearly needed to be addressed, so since that time, a number of y'all, especially Sen. [Jimmy] Hickey, worked very hard, and what I bring you today ... is a much better bill.
"But I still want you to know that the press is opposed to this, and I'll be honest with you, if I was in their shoes, I would be opposed to it," he said. "However, my responsibility is not to look out for their bottom lines. It is to look for the state's and their tax dollars."
Media representatives rejected an offered two year phase-in as a compromise, he said.
Hamilton said that the amended bill "leaves five possibilities for a citizen or a contractor to find bids.
"Before [the amendment] there were infinite possibilities -- any website anywhere. Today, there can be three websites, newspapers [and] trade journals [under the bill]," he said.
"You have to look at five different sources to make sure you can see it. It is not good for contracting. It is not good for the people of Arkansas," Hamilton said.
But Hickey, R-Texarkana, said the current state law allows public notices to be in a newspaper or a trade journal, and "the way that this legislation was written it actually takes that trade journal out.
"That is in addition to the newspaper or in addition to the website, if somebody wants to do it," he said.
Hamilton also questioned how the proposed Public Works Committee "is supposed ... to review [the process] for unscrupulous activity.
"If there is a website in Louisiana and two others out of state, how are they going to make sure the process is done fairly? How will they catch an unscrupulous data center employee who is supposedly getting the sealed bids? That makes no sense to me," he said.
Noting that the committee would have three representatives of local government, one procurement office representative and one from the newspaper industry, Hamilton said the provision "gives total control to the local agencies to decide who they are going to use, how much you are going to pay, and Mr. Fleming has already got a head start, folks," he said.
Ashley Wimberley, executive director for the Arkansas Press Association, said the bill "ties public notices to electronic bidding" and "other states are not tying electronic bidding to public notices.
"We need to have the public notice process in the newspaper, and in turn we can push people to the specific website that that bid is on," she said. "That's what they are doing in other states, using the newspaper as the marketing arm and notifying the public with the public notice."
Gov. Asa Hutchinson is neutral on the bill, Hutchinson spokesman JR Davis said after the committee meeting.
A Section on 04/05/2019